About the Blog’s Title

I read blogs for a year or so before I started commenting. I thought about starting a blog for at least a year before I did. Two related problems were focus and privacy. People who pronounce on these things (and even the WordPress FAQ) say to focus the blog’s topic. Since this advice seems to be given as a way to build a greater readership, which is not my primary goal (despite my happiness at each new reader), I’m not so concerned about it. However, the more areas one talks about, the easier it is to be identified. So, as a reader, I knew about getupgrrl’s uterus, but nothing about her job. I know about profgrrrl’s teaching and research but not her location.

I am not a particularly unique person (except insofar as we are all unique), but I don’t think there is anyone else who shares all of the following: my gender, research field and teaching fields, current location, and location of my first job after college.

Hmm. I am diverging into another topic: anonymity and pseudonymity. Let’s just say that I am not yet ready to blog under my legal name.

I named the blog Kaleidoscopic, with “generalist” and “indecisive” in the tagline because I wanted to write about my efforts to have a child and my struggles to finish my research and writing, and a few other things too.

Recently, it has been all in vitro all the time, which reflects my life these days, but I have other goals as well.

When I applied for college, one of the applications I filled out asked for a paragraph about “one word that defines me” or something like that. I used the word “kaleidoscopic” because I had the startling unusual thought that my strength lay in being well-rounded. It is clear that my counselors in high school thought of me as a humanities person, based on the summer programs they encouraged me to attend, but I still thought I might be a mathematician or a scientist.

In my work, I am not focused on a particular genre or region, and I enjoy teaching other periods than the one that I usually write about. I am not really a generalist, but that is the term that would describe me in a job search posting.

So the title Kaleidoscopic does not mean I think I am scintillating or beautiful, just seemingly scattered but in fact organized around some axis. I’d like to say so. I’d like to say, the axes of my values and experience, but I’m not sure I’m as consistent as that implies.

What Kind of Name is “Luolin” Anyway?

Luo Lin is not my legal name, but it is a real name that I have used in China and Taiwan and in my Chinese classes in the United States. My first Chinese teacher (at a short intensive course I took the summer before I started my job in Old Colony) gave it to me. Most of the people I met in China and Taiwan and many of my classmates knew me only as Luo Lin.

In thinking about this post, I realized that I have had Luo Lin as a name almost half my life.
When I decided to set up a Yahoo account with a pseudonymous screen name to use on the internet, I chose to use my Chinese name. Easy to remember, and I didn’t have to think of something clever. I didn’t realize that a decade later, I would be reading and occasionally commenting on China adoption blogs, where people would recognize luolin as probably a Chinese name. So, I feel like I have to keep explaining that I’m not Chinese, but I use this Chinese name, but I’m not trying to pass as Chinese online and so on.

For a long time, I liked Luo Lin better than my real name: it is more mellifluous and less gender neutral. I like my real name better these days, and don’t get much chance to use Luo Lin outside the computer.

Some details

Luo is the surname; Lin is the given name. Most Chinese have two-syllable given names (like Karen’s daughter Chaoxing etc) but not all. When they are one syllable, like mine, it is common to call the person by the full name, (Luo Lin) rather than just the given name (Lin) in a situation where the given name is used. (That’s not getting into nicknames and diminutives, like Xiao Luo/Little Luo, expecially because I can’t remember if it would be Xiao Luo or Xiao Lin.)
Pronunciation: two second tones Luo2 Lin2.

Meaning: I thought I remembered using “Luoma de Luo” (Luo as in the word for mule) to clarify the character, but I just looked it up and it is not that luo at all. But I am tired, and only looking in the easy pinyin dictionary.

The Lin is “beautiful jade.” The character has the wang (as in king) radical with the lin (as in forest) phonetic.

When I learn how to scan images into the blog, I’ll upload the characters and you can see an example of my babyish writing (in Chinese; in English I have a very mature illegible scrawl).